Disclosed Exchanges Depict Jeffrey Epstein and Summers as Close Associates
Numerous messages between adjudicated offender Jeffrey Epstein and former US treasury head Larry Summers were released this week, showing the pair acted as trusted allies.
These exchanges, spanning 2013 to early 2019, reveal the two men discussing private – and at times improper – views on politics and relationships.
I'm struggling to figure why [the] American elite believe if u take the life of your baby by physical abuse and neglect it must be not a factor to your acceptance to Harvard,”|“I’m trying to|I am attempting to|I'm struggling to} understand why [the] American elite feel if u kill your baby by beating and desertion it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,”} Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 message. However flirted with a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. KEEP CONFIDENTIAL THIS INSIGHT.”
During that period, Harvard University was grappling with an enrollment debate after a once incarcerated woman’s enrollment to a PhD program. Summers, a ex- president of the university who lost his position amid a controversy after making gender-biased comments about female academics, went on to say in the correspondence to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in [the] world was possessed by women without noting they are more than 51 percent of the populace.”
Summers was once a key player in the Democratic Party circles – a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, one of the key designers of Barack Obama’s response to the financial crisis, and a committed voice in the progressive media. But questions have remained about his connection with Epstein, a former associate of Donald Trump. Epstein was accused of a wide-ranging child sex trafficking operation before his demise in custody in 2019 in New York City.
Following publication of a earlier batch of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers commented that he “is very sorry for being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.
Left-leaning lawmakers disclosed emails from the Epstein estate this week that suggest Epstein was of the opinion Trump was aware of conduct by the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. In response, Conservative lawmakers released a much bigger batch of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate.
These records show that Summers continued friendly contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the most recent email exchange happening only months before Epstein’s arrest.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that he would be asking the Department of Justice and the FBI to examine Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent liberal leaders and corporate executives.
In the emails, Summers and Epstein converse on politics – notably Summers’s disdain for Trump – as well as the particulars of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, disclosed to Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an anonymous woman, and being rejected.
“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “overlook the 'daddy' remark, I'm dating the motorcycle guy, you responded appropriately.. frustration signals affection., no protests revealed fortitude.”
Summers affirmed his sorrow in a recent statement. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “As previously stated, my connection to Jeffrey Epstein represented a serious lapse in judgment.”
Summers was president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Epstein donated more than $9m to Harvard and its affiliated programs between 1998 and 2008, and was appointed a visiting fellow to carry out research. The university later found Epstein “did not have the academic qualifications visiting fellows normally possess and his application proposed a course of study Epstein was ill-equipped to pursue”.
Harvard only stopped accepting Epstein’s donations after he confessed to child sex offenses in 2008.
At that point Obama’s career was advancing. Summers would ultimately win appointment as director of the White House economic advisory body from January 2009 until November 2010.
After Summers left the White House, he began asking Epstein for philanthropic advice for his wife, Elisa New, a Harvard professor pursuing a poetry project. Epstein and his foundations made gifts to projects associated with Summers’s wife, and the two men met a dozen times between 2013 and 2016, often for dinner.
After media coverage about Epstein’s donations surfaced, New’s charity made a donation “more than” of that received to anti-exploitation organizations.
